What is you favourite deadly sin?

Eating shit, killing babies, beating Jude to death, anal sex, murdering a man of the law, pissing on the stage, throwing shit at the audience, spitting spitting spitting, tearing off Satan’s penis and beating him with it, farting, singing about rape, whores, paedophiles and rotten grandmothers. Those are just a few of the things the Tiger Lillies shared with us last night when they guided us from heaven to hell in the New Player Players Theatre in their new cabaret piece '7 Deadly Sins'.

Ninety minutes filled with darkness, laughter and obscenity left us entertained and our souls stained with macabre joy, greedy for more. In their words: 'Only fools and idiots are optimistic'.

Wander

We missed Short&Sweet last night, they took a break for a couple of weeks and came back with a bang yesterday. Good that our spy Bernd, from Inspyed distilled the evening to one great short movie from Phillip Van 'Come wander with me'. Have a look, it's gorgeous. And if that makes you want to wander on this rainy London day, make sure to check out Björk's new music video, wanderlust as well.

Two weeks at Leo Burnett London

Fourteen days, three placement teams, two briefs and one big table. Time for a short recap. We've spent most of our time on a brief for Child Road Safety, which is pretty open, very exciting and quite huge (a big idea type of brief). The other one on our desk is for an online campaign for Beefy & Lamby, we've got to get more people eating meat. To spice things up, this week we've launched an attack on traffic to get more assignments to keep us going.

The agency's in Kensington Village, the office seems quite isolated, but that's quite nice as it has it's own outdoor area with lots of green, benches and pigeons; fab for those rare sunny hours. On the inside, it's feels really chilled, light and spacious, and not like a big agency that's a part of the Publicis machine. In fact there's just enough space for some after hours football, maybe we'll give that a go.
We're working hard on every brief and eagerly waiting for our reviews. That's what this placement is about. We want to be better than the other teams, the ones on placement, and the ones with jobs.

20 Slides - 20 Seconds

After a quick beer with the agency lads, we jumped on the tube towards Russell Square. We were really excited about it, not Russell Square but Pecha Kucha Night. A format of presentation that was hosted by the D&AD last night. And it was quite brilliant.

Unlike most lecturey lectures, there were no long winded speeches that bored you half to death and half asleep. Instead, 13 speakers were invited on stage and were given 20 slides that lasted for 20 seconds each to tell us what they thought about stuff, all kinds of stuff. It was similar to Interesting 2007 last year, just a lot quicker.

There was one who stood out from the rest, perhaps because of his name (Sanky), perhaps because of his hair (big) or perhaps because he engaged the hell out of his audience for 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Whatever it was, I doubt anyone will forget the only slide of the evening that silenced the entire hall. He presented about 15 slides of stuff he loves, mostly funny and good ideas. Then he hit us with a picture of the falling man (9/11). 20 seconds of pindrop silence in the audience and nothing but applause thereafter.

A great evening full of AHA's, our favourite D&AD lecture so far.

Tarako!*#

Welcome to random red wednesday. Strangely we're both wearing red today, and fortunately we found these ridiculously awesome odd japanese commercials. They are showing how Tarako's Kewpie Pasta Sauce is invading the planet with their red dolls. Sticky music, great casting and fabulous costumes from the 50's give those videos a crazy spin way beyond quirkiness. We love them, we would die to see stuff like this running in the UK. Tarako!









Found on Kitsune Noir through Notcot

Mirror Mirror on the wall…

…who's the most creative of them all?

On Friday, Leo Burnett was great and gave us the day off so we could attend the wanted ads awards here in London, held by the Newspaper Society. The purpose; to gather talented young creatives from all over Britain, put them in a sexy building and let them compete against each other for one day. Delightfully this day started off great and was pleasantly sunny as we arrived at the London Art House in Islington, a great location we must say.

We were virgins to this event but some teams had been coming for the past couple of years. A few minutes after 9:30 the arena was filled with 24 creative teams, the highest number of participants ever in it's six year life. The conditions to participate were, you need to be a creative team and work in the advertising industry for no more than three years. Most of the teams were in their first jobs, with only a handful still on placement, like us.

We bumped into lots of familiar faces and even more new ones. We were quite glad to see so many people from our course, the new bucks university.

Tanked on Coffee we gathered in the main room to get briefed.

Al Young, the Creative Director of St.Luke's took the creative lead and introduced us to the tricky part of the brief: local media. The brief was set by Vodafone, we had to come up with an idea translating their existing strategy 'Make the most of now' into local media to communicate closer to the target audience. We were the keenest kids in town, right on the front row. During Al's brief speech he told us that we were here to win, like gladiators, to defeat and to kill (well not quite), but you get it. The eager competitiveness of this event was the best thing about it.

Armed with pens, pads and the brief under one arm the creative teams then spread through the building, every team was assigned a place.

Our spot was 'the Art Studio', we were sharing it with Imogen & Lianne from McCann-Erickson, Manchester.

It was a race against time, with ideas and moments flying by, we jotted down our initial thoughts and then worked on further. Although the seating was comfy, Wal strangely dropped on the floor to search for inspiration on the ceiling. The minutes pretty much ticked on in the same fashion. We had five hours to come up with a campaign idea to fit the local challenge and like most teams we used and needed every last second.

At 4pm the work was stopped and the teams rushed down for their well earned break before presenting their ideas to the groups of judges. Everyone was stressed out as the pressure was high – everyone wanted to succeed.

After presenting we spent the time waiting for the results with calming beer and nervous chatter.

The break gave us a second to catch up with a few mates and take some snaps. Here's James & James & Jai & Wal. They're great guys and are currently on placement at Lowe, they work in our former cheese factory office.

Next the announcement of the winners. Short, sharp and straight to the point. Naturally it left most disappointed but the two winning ideas totally deserved it, they were quite brilliant. Sadly none of them was us but hey there's always next year, a great day like this deserves a second try.

To drown the sorrow and celebrate the lesson the whole bunch went on to the pub.

Where people discussed the work, made new friends and enjoyed the Friday evening after this day of brain acrobatics.

Congratulations to the winners, Miranda and Zoe from LeanMeanFightingMachine and Enrique and Borja from Mother. Even crestfallen about not having won we agreed that their work was great and earned them the prize: They will attend the European wide competition, which will be held for two days in Stockholm in a months time. So fingers crossed for our UK teams! Go on guys make us proud.

After a couple of hours things became hazy and the photos blurry, good times. It was a great learning curve for us and can't wait for next year.

Another one

Looks very much like Fallon likes the 14th of April, two strikes on one day. Don't think we'll get that track out of our heads today. This new Budweiser spot is directed by Harmony Korine, it's the second spot for him, the first one was already gorgeous (Thorntons 'Stuck') and one of our favourites from last year. Creative Kudos to John Allison and Chris Bovill for this great choice and spot.

Sony Foam City

Fallon's spoiling us, the waiting has ended. We do like the Sony spot way more than the Cadbury Trucks commercial.

D&AD judging week

This week D&AD is judging all the work for the 2008 competition. As our friend Ray is covering the event I ended up at the judge party last night, which was filled with creatives from all around the world. Everyone seemed tired but I guess that's pretty understandable after a day full of reviewing work.

There I met Brett McKenzie, chief writer for ihaveanidea.org. He's one of the guys responsible for Portfolio Night, which is happening for the second time in London this May. The last tickets were sold yesterday and the list of creative directors is still growing.

Brett and Ray are blogging about the D&AD judging week at ihaveanidea.org/live, check it out for the latest stuff.

Leo Lab Landing

Monday morning Jai and Wal floated into Leo Burnett to find a buzzy place full of super friendly people. The office is crazy spacious, great for throwing our beloved hacky sack around. One of the other teams arrived with us yesterday, the third team of the Leo lab join us today. We spent our first day introducing ourselves, admiring serious finger boarding skills and acquainting ourselves with the two floored cafeteria.

Ready

More Creative Blogs

Lately lots of creatives have started blogging, we like that! So we thought we'd feature them. Without further ado. Lo and behold, new blogs for your creative advertising pleasures.

Carb Free Creativity – http://carbfreecreativity.blogspot.com/
Big G and Digital Roy, two young creatives from glue London are writing this fun blog about random geeky stuff they stumble across and some bits and pieces about their sandwich revolution.

Ping – http://lookingforping.blogspot.com/
Conrad and Alex are looking for ping, a creative team studying at Manchester Met, they documented their journey through the D&AD Workshop and share some of their work with you.

All about the Crit – http://allaboutthecrit.blogspot.com/
Rachel Dutton and Debbie Castaldo, two young ladies trying to break into advertising, relentlessly going to crit after crit and reporting back from the opinion front.

Happy Thought – http://happy-thought.blogspot.com/
Matt Squarebrain is a guy with a pleasantly positive attitude. He works at AQKA London and writes about all kinds of fun and thought provoking stuff around our favourite topic – advertising!

The naked Copywriter – http://hayesthompson.blogspot.com/
Hayes Thompson is a freelance London based copywriter bringing us amusing rants about interesting and annoying things.

After the savoy truffle – http://afterthesavoytruffle.blogspot.com/
Chris is from Canada and gives us a peek at what's going on on the other side of the pond. Great read.

Tom's Blog – http://www.tomandmike.com/
Tom is trying to get in, like most of us. He blogs about findings and bits of his work.

Inspyed – http://inspyed.blogspot.com/
Bernd is a good friend of ours, a great art director (he's looking for a copywriter, give him a shout) and posts things that inspire him, and all of us sometimes.

CREAbites – http://creabites.blogspot.com/
Natalie's blog is at the very beginning but we saw her stuff and we think it might turn into a cool place. She's a Spanish art director now trying her luck in London.

Averything Else – http://averythingelse.blogspot.com/
Recently discovered we cannot say much about Adam's blog, besides that he posts lots of work, some quite good work!

Pisspoorenglish – http://pisspoorenglish.wordpress.com/
A copywriter from South Manchester sharing his work in progress and portfolio on his blog.

No More Suits – http://www.nomoresuits.blogspot.com/
Mark Lewis is currently on the Watford course and entered the Blogosphere quite recently, yet we think it's gonna be worth keeping an eye on his blog.

Seemore – http://seymoursees.blogspot.com/
Tom Seymour is a young 3D designer who graduated from St. martins a couple of years ago, now he is working as a hybrid creative at Wieden+Kennedy London. He works on pretty exciting stuff – not to miss out on.

Puh, that'll keep you busy for now. Of course there are lots of other 'older' blogs but we've linked them before. Sorry if we missed anyone new, drop your link in the comments and we'd love to have a look at your blog. Happy lunchtime!

Six weeks at Lowe

We had a brilliant last Friday at Lowe, cheers fellas. Today we've been reflecting on our six weeks there and here is what we walked away with. A big thanks to everyone at Lowe, Take CARE.

• Considering how much effort goes into coming up with an idea, we've learnt it takes just as much, if not more, to hang onto it. We've learnt ideas don't take care of themselves and although it would be a lot easier to just let them go, it's just not worth the agony after. Note to self, take care of your work.
  
  
• We were surrounded by truly brilliant creatives and it was really easy to feel intimidated but you just cant afford to let that happen. For one, they'll never know who we are and more importantly, we won't know them. It's important that we make the most of these opportunities and these people. Pick their brains whenever we can, wherever we can. We learned more in five minutes chatting with Lowe's creatives than we did in a whole day spent with a brief behind our desks.
  
  
• Fair enough, getting stuff run was great, but it wasn't brilliant. We crafted work to tick everyones boxes - and forgot about ours. Granted, that got us from A to B, but in the long run it's not something we'll be telling the grand kids about. So now - we'd rather focus on doing great work rather than getting work out.
  
  
• One thing we noticed was, we spent ludicrous amounts of time 'answering' a brief only to have the solutions skimmed over. It was strange, but the ideas that got the attention were the ones, that were a little whack. Lesson, don't stick to the brief, or you might miss out on something.

Test Tube Creatives

Our six week stint is soon to come to a close this Friday. Life after Lowe will continue as another door opened today leading us further west. Leo Burnett is running a placement scheme called 'the Leo Lab' which puts three creative teams in a melting pot to see who survives – hell yeah we're up for that.

So after a bit of pestering, some good fortune and a little elbow grease we've managed to swindle ourselves into the Lab and start on the 7th of April. This gives us a week in between to get our beauty sleep and some well deserved and needed haircuts.

Say cheese!

The new sign on our office window, for this last week.
Thanks for the suggestions.

Vodka

We're participating in The Kaiser's Ultimate Beverage Bracket. A fun bit where two blogs argue for their cause in order to determine the best drink. We're fighting for Vodka, and in the first round we're up against White Russian, represented by Charles. Of course we're more than qualified to argue for that, as Wal was born and raised in the former Soviet Union.

Here are our thoughts why Vodka is way better than anything else, and far better than White Russian (and believe us, back in the days when you'd try to put coffee and milk in your most precious Vodka you'd be punished with a naked bear dance, not fun.) If you agree, take a second and vote for Vodka here. Thanks.

Please remember, drink responsibly as Vodka would like to entertain you for many many more years to come. За Здоровье! (cheers)

Orphanage, Ranch or Cave?

There are a few moving desks at the agency at the moment and we’ve been jammy enough to be given our own office. Granted it’s probably only for a couple of days but what the hell, we say make the most of what you’ve got an all that! So in celebration and to make the blank walls a little more interesting we thought we’d name our temporary abode. Below is what we’re thinking; what should we call it?

Name our office

Jai & Wal's thought bubble
The meadow for free range pencils
Shoehorn ranch
Recruitment office for brain cells
Frankenstein's spare parts
Magic cave of nothingness
Jai & Wal's orphanage - the place where
lonely ideas come to grow up

Results

Fuck Green

In june we wrote a paper for the account planning school of the web on HUMMER. The strategy we drew out of it was 'Fuck Green' which we made into a poster campaign. Here we go.

We thought about reworking it for quite some time, and found a different route on the same strategy. We're deciding which one to pick up, to refine and expand. Opinions?

The Rise and Fall of the Ad Man

'Cultural commentator Peter York takes a look at the changing fortunes of British advertising, through the story of the personalities who led it through its highs and lows.' Ah, jolly good ol' days, the golden era of the Ad Man. Watch the whole program here (online for 5 more days) and learn about advertising history.

They say the un-corporate and flamboyant ad man is gone? We shall all prove them wrong, shouldn't we?

Step by step

Today we signed off our first ad as a creative team. Last week we've written a trade press ad for John Lewis here at Lowe – it just got approved by the client. Given the restrictions we were still able to put in some sweetness in the headline and are quite proud of it. It is a beginning, a first step – Yay!

The Pearce Sisters

The BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards took place a couple of weeks ago here in London and there are lots of great films to be explored from the nominations. The winner of the category 'Short Animation' is one of our favourites, we discovered this one earlier in the year at Short & Sweet. It is called 'the Pearce Sisters' and directed by Luis Cook. Fabulously twisted and evil it is very much worth nine minutes of your time. If you like, come along to Short & Sweet next week, we'll go to the one on tuesday, as they will show more BAFTA nominees and winners. You can watch the full short film here at atom.

For anyone who's ever hated

The Lowe Law

Two weeks at Lowe has gone by and like always there are times we are overly busy and times we have a spare minute to post, so we seize it. It's very interesting here, we like the agency, there is great talent here and the client list promises good fun. We've been doing lots of writing on John Lewis and exciting brand work on Saab.

One thing we cannot miss out on sharing with every young (and old) creative out there is this sheet of paper which greeted us here on the first day. It told us straight what Ed Morris, the Creative Director of Lowe London expects from a junior team. We like this approach - it's inspiring. More placements should start with a manifesto.